Fig. 3

Expression of HAM56 protein coincides with rapid progression of HAD. (A) HAM56 and β-tubulin (βTub) protein immunoblots of postmortem cortical tissue from HIV-1-infected patients with no dementia (ND), non-progression (NP), moderate progression (MP), and rapid progression (RP) of HAD. These results were replicated three times with similar results. ND and NP samples were from separate immunoblots (white space between blots) and aligned for comparison. P, positive control. (B) Mean levels of HAM56 protein relative to that of β-tubulin from HIV-1-infected patients with ND, NP, MP, and RP. Representative blots are shown in (A). The levels of HAM56 were analyzed for significance by means of the Kruskal-Wallis test for multiple groups (p ≤ 0.006). *Fisher’s least significance difference posthoc test indicated highly significant differences for HAM56 (RP to ND, p ≤ 0.0001; RP to NP, p ≤ 0.0137; RP to MP, p ≤ 0.0001). Data are means ± SEM. (C) The Spearman rank correlation test was used to compare HAM56/β-tubulin ratios to progression of HAD and yielded ρ = 0.502, p ≤ 0.027. (D) The Spearman rank correlation test was used to compare HAM56/β-tubulin ratios to severity of HAD and yielded ρ = 0.700, p ≤ 0.001. Eleven additional cases were used in the statistical analysis (data not shown).